Best Persons

Representative Ron Barber (D-AZ) is holding a "Congress On Your Corner" event at a Safeway in Tuscon this weekend. Gabrielle Giffords and Barber were both shot at a "Congress On Your Corner" event at a Safeway in Tuscon last year.

Rep. Ron Barber (D-AZ), who was sworn in to Congress earlier this week after winning the special election to succeed former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, will hold his first “Congress On Your Corner” district event this Saturday. Giffords was gravely wounded while holding her own district event in January 2011, in a shooting that also injured Barber, then Giffords’s district director.

The event will be held at a Safeway in Tucson, at 9 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. local time.

“This event is the first of many I will hold so that I can be accessible to all of my constituents throughout southern Arizona,” Barber said in a statement. “I will not become isolated in Washington. My work at the Capitol will be influenced by what I hear and learn here in Arizona.”

It takes courage to hold an event at a location where both your former boss and yourself were shot and several of your closest colleagues were killed by a madman. Ron Barber is clearly demonstrating that he won't be intimidated.

Barber successfully defeated Republican challenger Jesse Kelly who posed for campaign photos holding assault rifles and held a campaign event wherein supporters could fire assault rifles and enter a raffle for a Glock pistol. The same type of pistol used to shoot Gabrielle Giffords and Barber at a "Congress On Your Corner" event at a Safeway in Tuscon.